A hundred and twenty million cases of the most deadly, most contagious…and least excusable…disease in medicine. For smallpox can infallibly be preven… - Frederik Pohl

Most of us rather hastily and thoughtlessly regard “science” as a sort of collection of linear accelerators and space vehicles and organic chemistry models. In fact it is not any of these things; it is only a systematic method of gathering and testing knowledge, involving certain formal procedures: gathering information, forming a theory to explain the information, predicting certain consequences of the theory and performing an experiment to test the prediction. If you investigate any area of knowledge (whether it is stellar physics or the number of angels who can dance on the head of a pin) by this method, you are doing science. If you use any other method, you are doing something else.

What will come of these things? That is a fair question. Unfortunately there is no answer. Not yet. If we knew the answer in advance, we would not have to perform the experiment.

Advertising reaches out to touch the fantasy part of people's lives. And you know, most people's fantasies are pretty sad.